Snowdrops Info

The gardens are famous for the huge drifts of naturalised Snowdrops that cover most of the
moat and the grounds around the Norman castle and house in February & March - please read more about
the Snowdrops Event at Benington Lordship.

Once overgrown the moat is now carefully managed so the Snowdrops can thrive, the grass
is allowed to grow and cut late in the summer once the bulb foliage has died, in the autumn
the thick carpet of Sycamore leaves is cleared and composted. The tall Sycamores provide an
ideal habitat giving essential shade during hot summer months.

Two species make up the spectacular display, single Snowdrops Galanthus nivalis,
and doubles, Galanthus nivalis "flore pleno". More varieties can be found scattered
around the garden, a small collection was planted around the fruit trees by the Swimming
Pool in the early 1990's.

With the number of varieties increasing every year more room was needed, most of the named
varieties are now growing as a labelled collection in the mature shrub borders of the Walled
Garden. New borders are being created to allow further expansion and planted with winter
interest plants such as Cornus and Helleborus.

Although there are many hundreds of named varieties many show little variation without
close inspection, the Pool area is planted with mainly distinctive plants like Galanthus
"Mighty Atom" notable for huge flowers up to two inches across, and the very
dainty Galanthus gracilis "Highdown" which has blue tinted twisted leaves and small
finely marked flowers.

Over 200 named varieties now grow around the garden; many are easily overlooked amongst the
masses but worth looking for, recently an unusual yellow form of G. nivalis was found
growing near the ruin. A photo gallery showing many of our varieties and can be seen here

A list of many of our named varieties growing in the gardens is below.

Plant Sales 2014: Single and double snowdrops plus a limited number of named varieties and will be available starting Sat 8th Feb,
Sales will be on a first come, first served basis and we regret that we are unable to take postal orders, payment by Cash or Cheque only, we do not have card facilities, Hellebores will also be for sale. We are always interested in swaps
for something we haven't got. Please contact us by
email .